Archive for the ‘Reader Heroes’ Category

Readers make the world a better place. The I Love My Kindle blog recognizes those extraordinary few who make heroic efforts to expand their minds, their hearts, and their perspectives by engaging with the world’s culture through the experience of literature.

Our readers so far have come from places not always associated with heroism…like most ILMK readers, their lives have presumably been relatively safe.

ILMK Reader Hero #5, known only as Amjad, is a fourteen-year old living in one of the least safe places in the world…war-torn Syria.

Imagine that bombs were falling around you every day. In your neighborhood, homes are often in ruins.

What would be most important to you in that situation?

For some, there was one particular goal. It was a goal that drove them to risk sniper fire, as they risked everything to enter those ruined homes, in quest of a particular kind of treasure. That treasure would be taken to a secret location, literally underground.

What were they after?

Books.

Eventually, according to reports, there were 15,000 books in this subterranean haven.

Amjad became effectively the librarian, spending several hours a day there, reading and caring for the books.

This young teen describes in news stories how reading expanded a frightened mind, how important it was. In a CNN story, the translation of Amjad’s comments includes this:

“I liked the place and I learned by reading. Reading made me happy.”

In that CNN piece by Frederik Pleitgen and Claudia Otto, we learn that, while Amjad had so far survived the war, the library has not. Civilians have been removed from the area. The carefully maintained shelves are now mostly bare, with volumes fallen and in disarray…at least, those not removed by Syrian troops.

Amjad smiles to see the library again on the reporter’s phone.

It was an island of sanity, history, and community in a sea of chaos and destruction.

For months, Amjad, fourteen years old, would make an arduous swim to that island…and once there, would guide other swimmers, dripping with despair, to 15,000 worlds of escape.

Only to swim back, risking life…and would repeat it again and again

There were many heroes in the story of this library, many who dared all to read and to help others read…and not all have survived.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

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Readers make the world a better place. The I Love My Kindle blog recognizes those extraordinary few who make heroic efforts to expand their minds, their hearts, and their perspectives by engaging with the world’s culture through the experience of literature.

However, the assigned reading for school seemed to be pretty similar…as Marley put it, they were about “white boys and dogs”.

Where the Red Fern Grows

Sounder

Old Yeller

I’ve seen Marley interviewed a couple of times, and it’s important to note that our fourth Reader Hero is not saying that those books are bad…just that its good to be able to read books with characters who are similar to you, because you can empathize more easily with them and their situations.

A hero helps other people, and what Marley did in response is what earned that title from us.

We hope to send Marley a Reader Hero t-shirt in recognition (as we have done in the past with a Reader Hero), if arrangements can be made. If you can help with that, comments can be made privately to this post, and any personal information will not be shared with readers. Please indicate that the comment is private.

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

I’m seeing some interesting choices for books…and some moving comments.

I just wanted to let you know, in case you want to participate. If you, feel free to link to your picture in a comment to this post. Of course, as always, you can also tell me and my readers what you think.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

and other sources (including a Jeffrey Trachtenberg piece in the WSJ which was behind a paywall), they plan to split into two entities by the end of the first calendar quarter of next year.

One part will be NOOK Media (the devices and the content), and the other part will be the retail segment, which includes the brick-and-mortar stores.

It seems that the new sail (the NOOK) with which they had outfitted their corporate ship has become an anchor. 😉

This short excerpt tells the tale:

“Device and accessories sales were $25 million for the quarter and $260 million for the full year, declining 30.1% and 44.8%, respectively, due to lower selling volume and lower average selling prices. Digital content sales were $62 million for the quarter and $246 million for the full year, declining 18.7% and 20.6%, respectively, due primarily to lower device unit sales.”

On the other hand, the retail segment was definitely…um…less bad. 😉 Core comparable sales were down 3.1%, but overall, things were pretty flat…which is a considerable improvement.

Barnes & Noble is having a NOOK book sales on beach reads…and since Amazon tends to match prices, that means they are likely to be discounted in the Kindle store as well. I did check, and did see the price matching, although I didn’t check them all:

Sales in the trade sector (this group doesn’t include textbooks, kids books, or professional/scholarly books) dropped 2.3% (we’re talking about cash, not units), but other sectors grew.

In terms of formats, I’ve written before about how e-books are largely replacing mass market paperbacks as far as market positioning goes: relatively cheap and convenient. MMPs were down another 6.7% to $781 million…which you can compare to e-books having $3.03 billion.

Hardbacks (again, we’re talking revenue, not units) were still much higher than e-books, at $5.14 billion.

I don’t want to take too much away from the article…if you like to see these sorts of stats, I recommend it.

Through Saturday: over $100 worth of apps for free!

Amazon alerted me through e-mail (which I really appreciate…it lets me help you) about thirty-one apps they are giving away, just through tomorrow (Saturday).

There are always lots of free apps at Amazon, of course, but these are ones for which you would normally pay.

I just figure I’ll go ahead and get all of the ones, if I don’t already have them. With apps, you can get them for “Cloud Only”, so they don’t take up any memory on your devices unless you choose to use them.

This set includes apps that are generally pretty well-rated, and it has Splashtop and a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

One interesting thing: some apps (like Plex, which is part of this deal) are compatible both with my

They won’t all be cross-compatible: if a game/app is designed to work with the Fire Phones dynamic perspective (which I call “dyper”), it won’t be able to do the same thing on the Kindle Fire. They might be able to make two different versions of it available, though, which it would seem like must be the case with the Fire TV and the Kindle Fire.

Children’s books given away at Food Banks

I love this story!

When our now adult kid would have birthday parties growing up, we normally did them at the Food Bank (that was our kid’s choice). It was actually a lot of fun. We would reserve a time, and we’d show up with maybe ten or fifteen people (kids and guardians). We would sort food donations and box them up. It was hard work, and you had to do it right (one big part was checking expiration dates, and looking for damaged containers…like moldy peanut butter). We got to bring our own music, though, and we could crank it up! We’d spend an hour or so (I think that’s right), and end up with a whole palette of food for people!

Afterwards, we’d invite people out to pizza or something like that.

It felt really good to be able to help.

Well, it would have felt even better if we could have given out toys, too, which is what happened recently in England, according to this

The book that was given away was Super Duck, by Jez Alborough (not available in a Kindle edition), which I understand is popular in England.

When we buy our Toys for Tots donation every year, I do think it’s a good thing to get well-known brands, like Spider-Man. I just figure that has to make the kids feel more “normal”, since many of them see the commercials just like everybody else.

That likely ups Spencer’s cool quotient with the kids…not that Spencer needs that. You may recall that our Reader Hero put up a Little Free Library…and it was ordered taken down by the City Council. This issue is still unresolved (you can click our link above to add your support), but we particularly salute Spencer for approaching this by reading up on city codes to work within the system and in a mature and responsible way.

Full disclosure: one of my relatives knows Daniel Handler, although we’ve never met.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Like this:

Readers make the world a better place. The I Love My Kindle blog recognizes those extraordinary few who make heroic efforts to expand their minds, their hearts, and their perspectives by engaging with the world’s culture through the experience of literature.

program is a way for readers to selflessly help others share their love of reading by setting up a small outside bookshelf where people can take and leave books.

Spencer Collins set up one of the sites in Leawood, Kansas,with different sections for different types of books.

Spencer is nine years old.

While the act of setting up the library itself shows how Spencer is positively contributing to the community, the story goes beyond that.

The City Council ordered the Little Free Library be removed…because it violated ordinances about “accessory structures” (which are not attached to houses).

How Spencer reacted shows the resourcefulness that reading can teach you.

Spencer is reading up on the city codes, and is going to challenge the decision.

This Reader Hero didn’t just give up, or get mad, or work outside the system.

If Spencer’s noble actions succeed, the law could be changed, benefiting Leawood (and possibly other communities) now and in the future.

Thank you, Spencer, for being a Reader Hero!

—

Readers of ILMK are welcome to express their congratulations to Tyler Weaver and to offer support and encouragement by commenting on this post and/or clicking on the poll below (an additional way to support is below the poll):

If you do so, please keep in mind Spencer’s own mature response to the situation.

We hope to send Tyler a Reader Hero t-shirt in recognition (as we have done in the past with a Reader Hero), if arrangements can be made. If you can help with that, comments can be made privately to this post, and any personal information will not be shared with readers. Please indicate that the comment is private.

To summarize, Tyler had been winning the local library’s summer reading contest for years. The Library Director, Marie Gandron, essentially asked Tyler to stop competing, and was planning to convert the event from a competition to a random draw.

Lita Casey, a Librarian Aide, expressed concerns about the decision, indicating a feeling that changing the rules would not encourage reading in children.

Following that, Casey was terminated.

While apparently no reason for the termination was given, this is an excerpt from the article:

““I worked there for 28 years without a complaint,” said Casey. “I have to believe it was related to the whole reading controversy.”“

It is easy to imagine the impact this might have on Tyler, a nine-year old who called Lita “Gram”. At nine, many people begin to understand the impact of their actions on the world, and can judge cause and effect based on what they do and who they are very strongly.

I’m hoping that the small gift of the t-shirt helps Tyler feel good about being a Reader Hero.

where you can express your support for Tyler. Please consider doing so…I think the best thing in this case is to emphasize the positive.

Bargains with and without Special Offers

While there was a lot of concern expressed when Amazon introduced ad-supported Kindles, the versions with ads have been consistently more popular than those without since the option existed, and you can see that’s still the case:

“Of course,” some will respond, “that’s not because people like the ads. It’s because the Kindles are cheaper with the ads.”

Well, they are cheaper because the advertisers help subsidize the cost of your device. I often see people express it as “buying out of the ads”, but really, the first one with ads lowered the price…it isn’t that not having ads raises the price. Whoops, I’m back to that positive/negative thing again. 😉 The standard price is without Special Offers, and with Special Offers is a discounted price.

However, I do think some people like seeing some of the ads. For example, there is an offer right now that lets you get up to thirty Kindle books for $1 each. There are books in the Muirwood series by Jeff Wheeler, and other authors include Lee Goldberg, Scott Nicholson, and L. J. Sellers. It looks to me like the non-Special Offer prices go as high a $4.99.

If you have a Special Offers Kindle, it should appear eventually on your screen, or you can check the Offers listed on your device. On a non-Fire Kindle, check Home-Menu. On a Fire, swipe to your left on the homescreen.

What happens if you don’t have a Special Offers Kindle?

There are always plenty of bargains in the Kindle store, but thanks to Books on the Knob for the heads up on this

I am a member of AmazonLocal (it’s free), but weirdly, I didn’t see this deal when I looked on the national page, or at Amazon.

This is a voucher you redeem (it looks like Books on the Knob may get some credit, which is fine with me…they deserve it) for the ability to choose any of 40 books for $1 each. There seems to be quite a bit of overlap between the Special Offers and AmazonLocal deals, but they aren’t quite the same. Interesting…

Reactions to Collections in the Kindle for iOS app

I wrote yesterday about a new version of the Kindle for iOS (mobile Apple devices) app, which includes Collections (a way to create categories of e-books on your device).

I wasn’t surprised to see people who don’t have an iOS device express concerns that Apple products got this highly-desired improvement before Amazon’s own device, the Kindle Fire. I was a tad surprised to see the name-calling about those Apple devices from some quarters, but that happens.

I think in this case that it came to iOS first partially because iOS was getting a big software update (and new devices), so it makes sense that resources were being applied to that segment.

More interesting to me was people who did get it saying that it showed them Collections from all of their devices as options…even ones they were no longer using.

That is what you would see if you went to import another device’s collections on your non-Kindle Fire, but it is interesting that it worked that way in an app.

It may mean that we are heading towards better integration of Collections, and perhaps centralized management…which might mean Collections at

That would be the kind of software innovation I was picturing possibly happening this year…although it sounds like Page Flip (the ability to look ahead in the book without actually going there may be pretty cool).

Changes to Manage Your Devices on MYK

Speaking of MYK, here’s something that seems to me to be more challenging than it was before.

It used to be that when we went to that MYK page above and then clicked or tapped

Manage Your Devices

we would see them all on the page, sort of like search results on Amazon.

Now, they are in a stripe at the top, and you have to use a chevron (like an arrow without the stick), at least on a PC, to jump through, six devices/apps at a time. We have thirty apps and devices currently registered, and this seems harder. When you do click, the screen seems quite bare…a lot of white space…and doesn’t seem as intuitive.

I thought maybe it was done to be more mobile friendly, so I visited MYK in my Maxthon browser on my Kindle Fire. I couldn’t swipe the stripe to see more devices/apps…I still had to tap the chevron.

By the way, one reason we have so many apps/devices (there is no limit to the number you can have registered to your account) is that there are many duplicates for some of the apps…for example, even though I only have it on one PC, there are several installations. I think that happens when the app updates. I’ll go through at some point and remove the clones. What I’ll do is rename them at MYK so I can tell which one is which on my device, and then deregister the ones I don’t need.

For Amazon Associates: tracking your Collections’ impact

I’m having quite a bit of fun creating my Collections on Amazon.com. I’m being careful not to prioritize it too much, and the build up is slow. However, I am, I think, making them pretty interesting…I’m writing an overall description, and descriptions for each item (although I am sometimes adding items and then adding the descriptions later.

So far, I have

A Fortean Education

Seventies Social Sci-Fi

1939: The Best Pop Culture Year Ever

(re)Make This

I am still interested in requests…it would be fun for me to put together a Collection based on a request somebody had. 🙂

Anyway, I’ve been communicating with Amazon some on this. It’s clearly just getting going, and they are looking for input. As someone who has taught Project Management, I know you have the most opportunity to shape the future of something in the beginning of it.

I created a document I told them they could distribute to Associates freely and without attribution to me. I know some of my readers are Associates, and I thought you might find it helpful:

===

How to Track Advertising Fees Generated by Your Collections on Amazon

Amazon has recently added a new feature which allows customers to create public Collections of purchasable items (movies, books, music, apps, and more) that can be viewed by other visitors to Amazon.com. You can name the Collections, add items to them, and describe both the Collection and each individual item.

As an Associate, you’ll want to know if having the Collections is resulting in any more advertising fees for you.

Since the Collections are on Amazon, your direct product links won’t generate any advertising revenue for you there.

However, you can link to your Collections page from your website or blog, just as you would with any other page link.

In order to know how that is impacting your advertising fees, you’ll need to create a separate Tracking ID, and use that for your Collections link.

First, log into your Associates site.

Then click or tap the

Account Settings

link at the top of the page.

Next, click or tap the

Manage your tracking IDs

link.

Click or tap the

Add Tracking ID

button.

This is where you’ll create the Tracking ID for your Collections link. You’ll need something no one else has used yet: you might want to use your initials or name and “collections” (for example, Jeff Bezos might use jbcollections or bezoscollections). What you use is up to you, but it can’t duplicate what someone else has already chosen.

If the one you pick is available, you will get a “Congratulations” message, and a button that will return you to your list of Tracking IDs.

Now, go to your Collections page on Amazon, if you are using the Associates Site Stripe. That will make this (and linking to other pages at Amazon) easier. For more information on the Site Stripe, see

in your top left corner of the input box which has appeared, use the dropdown to select the Tracking ID you just created.

You can use the link which will be created for you on your website or blog, and when people click or tap it and make a qualifying purchase, you’ll get your advertising fees.

To see how much you have earned, go to your Amazon Associates page. Under

Reports

choose

Tracking ID Summary

That will show you how much each of your Tracking IDs has earned. If you want to have more granularity (“Did the link on my sidebar generate more interest than the link in my post?”) you can create a separate Tracking ID for each channel you want to analyze.

You can use Tracking IDs for a number of purposes (tracking a specific webpage or promotion you’ve done, for example), and this one will show how much having those Amazon Collections is helping you.

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If you aren’t an Associate, it can be fun just to create the Collections, of course. I do think Amazon will eventually announce this (before the holiday buying season, and that it could be a big deal.

What do you think? How do you feel when somebody else gets something you don’t get? Should Amazon always bring things to the Fire before they bring them to the iPad? What would you think if it turned out that the Special Offers you were getting on your Kindle were also available to AmazonLocal members? Would you feel like you were looking at ads without getting an advantage? Have you created any Collections on Amazon? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post. Also, I would appreciate you considering responding to the poll for Tyler Weaver…up to you, of course, but I do think it could have a positive impact.

Like this:

Readers make the world a better place. The I Love My Kindle blog recognizes those extraordinary few who make heroic efforts to expand their minds, their hearts, and their perspectives by engaging with the world’s culture through the experience of literature.

They are our Reader Heroes.

Reader Hero #2: Tyler Weaver

Nine-year old Tyler Weaver read 63 books this summer to win an annual contest held by the Hudson Falls Public Library in New York.

This is Tyler’s 5th year in a row winning…which means that Tyler was four-years old for that first win.

Contestants are actually tested on the books, to be sure they have read them…and Tyler has met all of the requirements.

Congratulations to Tyler!

We also commend Tyler’s parent, Katie: younger sibling Jonathan is another frequent reader. Between them, they have borrowed 1,000 books from the library this year, according to this

We hope to send Tyler a Reader Hero t-shirt in recognition, if arrangements can be made. If you can help with that, comments can be made privately to this post, and any personal information will not be shared with readers. Please indicate that the comment is private.

Update: arrangements have been made for the t-shirt! If anyone would like to design it and send me a bitmap, that would be great. Also, for the reader who offered in a private comment to contribute, I do appreciate that, but I’ll take care of it. I initially thought about doing a public gift card, but I think it’s better that this be a case of recognition rather than remuneration.

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